Friends Before Top Secret Agencies
by hacktivism
Summary: A Friends inspired AU about our favorite agents. Skye, still hacking, moves in with Simmons, a biochemist working for May, who's good friends with Coulson, an IRS worker. In their building, Ward and Fitz live together. Fitz is a mechanic moonlight as an inventor and Ward is a buff mailman. What will happen when they all meet? Will they get along without HYDRA in the way?


The apartment was so much better than the van, even if Skye wouldn't admit it out loud. She still missed her van – it was reliable, and better than some of the other dumps she'd been in over the years, mostly because it was hers and hers alone. But this, well, for starters she had her own bed instead of a back seat with haphazardly thrown together bunch of blankets and pillows in attempts to make it almost comfortable. The shower was also a bonus, way better than rec centres', and Simmons was kind of a bonus, too.

Ever since high school, they'd been friends. It was totally like a sitcom, the bad girl who's failing and the brainiac become best friends. The only difference was that in this case, the bad girl didn't end up reformed with the help of her super lame friend, she still dropped out. And Skye didn't regret it. Jumping between foster homes and orphanages put a lot of pressure on a teenager, same with being unwanted, and her studies were never a big priority for her. Cyberspace was, always had been. It was a constant. So was Simmons. Even with Skye jumping from place to place, they figured out how to make their friendship work. When she got her van and left the random homes, staying in touch got a lot easier, and she started freelancing in hacks for cash. Word got around town at how good she was with the sketchier crowd and she made it work. Freedom was awesome.

Until the van got stolen. The sketchy crowd didn't really make for the best of friends when you pissed them off. Apparently they had some weird you can only hack for me clause Skye'd never found out about. Since it was kind of unreportable, she was homeless for about a day. Simmons didn't really like the idea of her living on the streets and they worked out a deal. Once she got a stable job, aka a better hacking gig than this one time fudge my taxes shit, she would pay her back and they'd be roommates. It was kinda cool to be living with someone you actually liked, and the apartment complex wasn't so bad. Sure, the guy across the hall sometimes got loud with his training videos, and their apartment sometimes smelled like fire – seriously, they had to be pyros, or maybe just awful cooks – but it was so much nicer. Skye was grateful, and she expressed that every way possible.

Tonight the every way possible was through pizza. Pizza with gross anchovies and suspicious tasting cheese to be exact, it was Simmons' favorite, and they didn't like to do pizza in halves at the place you got it from, so tonight, Skye was stuck with it. When the door knob turned, Skye looked up from her laptop screen. She'd just finished the screwing with finances hack for some guy named Jet, her hidden signature was planted in it flawlessly. Since she'd never been caught, she made a signature. It was fun, reckless, and it hadn't fucked her over yet so it seemed safe enough. Simmons always said it wasn't, but she still had gotten her a mug with the signature on it. Skye drank from it every day.

"Well, well, look who's finally home," Skye teased with a smirk. "I got your favorite non-pizza pizza. It's still tastes disgusting and kind of poisonous."

"Well you don't have to eat it," Simmons retorted, but had a smile firmly planted on her face. "I had to stay late with May to finish up my employment paperwork."

Skye rolled her eyes and handed her a piece of pizza when her friend joined her on the couch. While she could barely hold down a job, her best friend had just gotten one at some big corporation called Cybertek in biochemistry. It was a pretty big deal. "Yeah, yeah. Next time we're getting Meat Lovers. How'd the signing go anyway?"

"Pretty well, although I'm not entirely sure I didn't sign my life away and my hand's a bit cramped," she replied, holding her wrist for emphasis.

Raising an eyebrow, she wondered if that was really an over exaggeration. Companies like that were majorly corrupt, and she had a lot of clashing ideas, freedom of information just being one of them. She didn't voice those concerns to her friend though. This was a celebratory moment, not a serious one, so instead, she said, "If you really signed your life away, I'll just delete their files on you so there's no hard proof you were ever an employee. Does the boss seem okay?"

"Aww, you'd do that for me? How sweet." She replied, giving her a look that read _please don't_ before going on, "She's very supportive and interested in my ideas and has already given me a project to work on. The innovation is exhilarating, although I already feel pressured to be creative."

From the hallway, Skye heard banging, it was pretty regular around this time, however the swearing that accompanied it was not. "I'm gonna go see what's going on out there, hold that thought. And you're totally creative!" With a nod in response from the scientist, she headed out into the hallway where a tall man was struggling to get his bike through the narrow halls. In a _mailman _uniform. Skye raised an eyebrow and leaned against the door frame, "Isn't there a parking lot with a bike rack for that?"

"Yeah, but I'm not using it." He replied without looking at her.

"Clearly," Skye said drily. "Any reason why not?"

"If I lose it, I lose the job."

"What a shame that'd be. So you're a mailman? I love a man in a uniform, I'm like a dog that way." She grinned as she teased.

This time, he looked over at her as he spoke. "I'm working to become a personal trainer."

"That explains the 'one more set! You're almost there, keep going!' I hear every night. I'm sure you'll be a great personal trainer with hearing issues if you keep watching them that loudly. So you got a name, mailman?"

He leaned his bike against the wall, finally managing to position it correctly so it didn't scratch the walls, and said, "It's not _that _loud. It's a good exercise. Grant Ward."

"It is definitely that loud. I'm Skye, it's nice to meet you. I'm new to the building, I just moved in with my friend Jemma." From the apartment, she could hear Simmons call out a hello.

"Nice to meet you, too, Skye."

"Do you want to get a drink sometime, maybe tomorrow night?" She asked with a small smile. Normally Skye knew when guys were going to say yes to her or reject her, but this one didn't offer much up for interesting conversation and that made it hard to tell.

Ward looked surprised for a second, then said, "Sure. Does eight work?"

"Eight's good," As an afterthought, she added, "I'll bring my roommate along."

"I'll bring mine, too. His name's Leopold."

Skye smiled, "Sounds like fun." And then closed the door behind her. To Simmons she said, "We have plans with Grant and Leopold tomorrow night. We're getting drinks, and before you protest, I unraveled the mystery of the motivational training videos already. Next is the smell of burning stuff."

"The guys from 12B? Skye, you know I abhor setups."

"It isn't a setup! It's not even a date, I talked to Miles a couple days ago, and I know you 'abhor' it. I'm just trying to make friends. I think you'd really like the mailman, he's a man of few words, and Leopold as _friends!_"

Simmons swallowed a comment about Miles and her distaste for him and sighed. Skye was always trying to get her to be more social, even though she was perfectly alright staying in and enjoying the quiet. "Fine, I'll go with you. Does he really go by Leopold? That's a bit of a pretentious mouthful."

Skye beamed at her friend, slightly surprised she didn't start on about Miles. While she was in high school, she'd met him, and he'd taught her the ropes of hacking. They'd been on and off since she started doing her own thing with it. The whole underground operation wasn't her idea of a fun time, and cops busting her was the last thing she wanted. But she still cared about the guy, and most of the time, they got along great. "Awesome! And I don't know. I haven't met him yet, but Leopold is pretty pretentious. Maybe he'll be a brainiac, and not annoying about it, like you."

"Alright, alright, you know I'm going, no need to butter me up," Simmons replied, nudging Skye as she went to her room to change out of her work clothes.

Skye smiled and grabbed her customized mug off of the table. There was a knock on the door, and she called out an 'I'll get it.' When she opened it, there was a man standing there in a suit. _What the hell, _she thought, scrutinizing him. He had to be here for Simmons. "Are you from Cybertek?" She asked, suspicion clear in her tone.

"No, I'm here from the IRS." The man replied, oh so professional. "Can I come inside?"

Skye's immediate reaction was no to say no and shut the door, but she figured that's just make her look worse. She'd finished that hack about an hour ago, how could they already find her? How could they find her period? This had never happened before. Instead, she chose to play it cool. Flashing a smile and stepping aside for him, she said, "Of course."

When the door was closed, the man pointedly looked at her mug. "My name is Phil Coulson. I assume you're Skye?"

She nodded, not bothering to say anything about how it was nice to meet him. It wasn't, or it wasn't going to be. She was either a) caught from a hack or b) caught for never paying taxes, both would totally suck, and probably end in prison.

"I noticed something strange happen in one of our reports I was working on today, Skye. And it had what's on your mug inside of it. I've seen it before, in other reports, and I've seen you with the signature as well. I live in the building, too."

_Note to self: Never carry around the mug with tangible proof that you can hack into high security cooperation's for soda, it was never worth it,_ she thought as she listened to him talk. Slowly, she said, "You can't prove I did if I did it or not."

"Skye, I'm not here to get you arrested. I'm here to offer you a position at the IRS. All you have to do is keep other hackers out, and don't hack us anymore." This Phil seemed genuine, surprisingly. And it wasn't blackmail.

"So you don't want to report me or whatever?" She questioned, folding her arms across her chest. Skye was still skeptical.

"No, I'm not. Even if you reject my proposal, I won't call the police. If you do it again, though, I may have to. And not because I want to."

Skye nodded, digesting this, and finally said, "Can it be off the books?" Although she technically had an identity, she tried to keep it on the down low. Mary Sue Poots was her legal name, and she hadn't turned up anywhere since she ran away. She didn't even have a bank account, everything was in cash. The only ID she had was a driver's licence, and it had a fake name on it, courtesy of Miles.

Phil seemed torn on that. She couldn't blame him. It was a lot to ask of a stranger, considering what he had on her. Would it really be worth keeping his company clean? "I'll have to ask my boss about that." He said finally.

"Your boss knows?" She repeated, shocked.

"Yes. I found you, I told him, and he suggested offering you a position. We don't like security breaches, Skye, and very few can breach us." He sounded so kind, it also surprised her. This guy was nothing like she assumed.

"What's your boss' name?"

"Nick Fury." Phil replied, then he paused, "I'll talk to him on Monday and get back to you then. For now, here's my card. It was nice meeting you." And with that, he turned and left, like that was a normal meeting.

"Simmons!" Skye called out, "I think I just got busted and offered a job at the same time."


End file.
